Rep. Elijah Cummings Asks Trump to Realize All Black Communities Are Not ‘Places of Depression’

Maryland Rep. Elijah Cummings is attacking President Donald Trump’s racist rhetoric head on by telling him not all Black communities are worse for wear.

Cummings held a meeting with the Commander-in-Cheif about prescription drug prices Wednesday, March 8, and told press outside the White House he used the chance to inform Trump about the state of the Black community.

“I said to him, ‘Mr. President, most respectfully, when you’re talking about the African-American community, I want you to realize that all African-American communities are not places of depression and where people are being harmed,’ ” Cummings says. “As a matter of fact, I let him know that I’ve been living in the inner city of Baltimore, [Maryland] for some 35 years in the same house and that I think it would be good for him to acknowledge that most African-American people are doing very, very well.”

During Trump’s presidential campaign, he used “inner cities” as a synonym for the Black community.

“I would be a president for all of the people — African-Americans, the inner cities,” he said during a presidential debate in October. “You go into the inner cities and you see it’s 45 percent poverty, African-Americans now 45 percent poverty in the inner cities.”

In reality, the U.S. Census Bureau reported the Black poverty rate of metropolitan areas is at 26 percent. Trump’s claim is too high considering rural areas too, as the federal Economic Research Service says 37 percent of Black Americans living in the countryside are in poverty.

The 66-year-old congressman also discussed voter fraud claims, noting evidence for it is “all but nonexistent.” Cummings said Trump “seemed to get it” on both topics.

“Now, where he goes from there, I don’t know,” Cummings said. “But, I could not come out of this meeting without raising those issues.”